The fragile girl makeup trend is on a nostalgia-coded rise: What is it?

Matte looks are functional. Glossy looks are fun. Speaking of the latter, we have a new aesthetic girlie on the block, whose aesthetic we’re ready to adopt for the Fall months. Say hello to fragile girl! Now right off the vibes, in the era of strong, independent women, ‘fragile girl’ isn’t really a label many would be gravitating towards. But that’s exactly why the world of beauty and aesthetics are so enticing! Everything gets a makeover, including words like fragile. So now, fragile here, doesn’t refer to ‘easily broken or damaged’. It’s got a complete revamp to paint you in a translucent, transcendent light. Literally. Kissed by the stars. That’s the vibe we’re going for.
The focal point of tapping into the fragile girl aesthetic is to go heavy on the eyes, albeit with a light hand. Think lots of shimmer, but of the lightest tones. We’re talking whites, pearls, pale gold, luminescent pastels — everything is game as long as the pigment catches the light. Also, abandon your well-versed rules of cut-crease and the acceptable limits of where your eyeshadow line is supposed to end. An extended, blurred out likeness of a cat eye, a stroke of your eyeshadow brush lightly hitting the brow bone — everything is game. Of absolute importance for the ultimate fragile girl look is a focused emphasis on the inner corner of the eyes. Draw them out to the edge of the nose, add a few extra strokes of shimmer, the goal is to give yourself a feline touch, but ever so softly. If you’re a maximalist girlie and this seems a little too subtle for you, you’ll be happy to know that rhinestones, a few or even plenty, are fair game for the fragile girl aesthetic.
A post shared by SUITS ME styling system by Maria Trofimova (@suits___me)
The fragile girl trend is actually a more built on extension of the cold girl makeup trend, as well as the whole frozen makeup wave that crashed onto the beauty scene. The foundation of cold girl makeup was achieving a sense of transparency and sheerness with your products with blush adding the only pop of colour.
In the same sense, frozen makeup played heavy on ice tones that would be built up to pop on the eyes, with a much more dramatic payoff. Think a significantly more refined version of the favourite icy blue eyeshadow from the 90s. As Y2K-core as it gets. The fragile girl trend is the perfect midpoint between the two, now nestling itself into the collective conscience of all the makeup girlies, just in time for the cozy Fall months.
Are you ready to redefine fragility with some shimmer?